Geraldine's poem
SEPTEMBER
Summer melting in September
As autumnal equinox approaches
Winds blow and rains fall
As the days shorten to equivalent length
As sun dims from bright to pale yellow.
September brings harvest days
From vegetables to fruit
From potatoes to pumpkins
Some need canning or freezing
Others straight down the cellar.
Grapes are picked to change to juice or wine
Pears and apples get stacked on wooden racks
Peaches and plums undergo transformations
For the long coming winter chutneys and deserts
Summer is behind and winter is ahead !
The rising sun, shines gently through the morning mist
The setting sun plays with orange or pink cows in the fields
The birds gather to fly to milder shores
The leaves turn gold for their October show
And the first logs glow in the fireplaces.
Annemarie's story
September
Valerie put the pleated grey pinafore, the crisp white blouse and French navy cardigan on the chair and kissed her daughter goodnight. Tomorrow, the 3rd September, she would walk her daughter to school for her first day. A special day for her daughter, bittersweet for herself as it brought back long-forgotten memories of her own first day.
For Valerie school had meant going away from the family for the first time at the age of six. She would not see them again for three months. Although her life up country had been idyllic it was remote and the thought of meeting so many other children like herself had filled her with eager anticipation. And what about the train journey, her father had said. Two days chugging past wild animals, past lakes and jungles; bunk beds which folded down for the night, and a bag which her mother had filled with tangerines - naartjes she’d called them, a tube of Nestlé's condensed milk, and two bars of Turkish Delight, her favourite sweet. So young she hadn't, couldn’t, imagine three months without seeing them.
Her excitement was clouded when on the day of departure their nearest neighbour had climbed into the car beside her. As he had business in town her father had offered him a lift. Sandy Wilson, or Mr Wilson as she called him. She still remembered his dark hair, straight dark eyebrows and his pursed round mouth but most of all she remembered the day after her sixth birthday. She had spied him talking to her father and had asked if it was necessary to write him a thank you letter for her present. Just like the time when he’d seen her playing by herself under the jacaranda tree he said, “just give me a kiss.” She had run away then and had done so again.
On the big day she recalled getting up very early, her father loading her new school tin trunk with her name stencilled in white across the top, into the boot. Mr Wilson had manoeuvred his big body into the car right next to her; he had been wearing khaki shorts and khaki shirt, his pink legs close to hers; she had propped her toy gentleman rabbit between them.
No aircon in those days it had been a long, dusty journey from the lush mountain foothills of the Mountains of the Moon to the bustling town of Kampala and Mr Wilson had kept talking to her about learning maths and geography until she pretended to be asleep. She could still recollect his Scottish burr, his rolling r's, his ruddy face and beetle brows bent towards her. It should have been a special day with her parents; instead she had listened to the murmured talk of the adults and flinched when Mr. Wilson stroked her head or put his hot hand on her knee. He had even joined them for a grownup lunch at Chez Joseph, and had accompanied them to the railway station - after all, he had said, he was still due a kiss.
Looking back Valerie was surprised her parents hadn’t registered her disquietude. Perhaps they’d attributed it to her trepidation about leaving home for the first time.
At the station children of all ages, dressed in checked blue dresses or shirts and grey shorts milled around their parents, the young ones grasping parental hands. Valerie had been so happy, so relieved, to see one of her friends who was also starting school so far away and had dragged her mother to follow them into the same compartment.
Once there she had remained firmly ensconced in her seat clutching her rabbit. Beside her, still reclining on a bed of white tissue paper lay an exquisite doll, dressed as a Spanish dancer, which her parents had given her. She had stubbornly refused to come out again even to say goodbye to her father because Mr Wilson was still there, still demanding a kiss. She had sobbed as her father came into the compartment to give her a last cuddle before the whistle sounded and the train chugged off with its cargo of children through the African savannah. The worst September of her young life.
Jackie:
September
Excuse me Sir,
Yes, Madam,
I think you’ve made a mistake with my bill
Oh how is that? I very much doubt it
Lets have a look
Well you see, I received this bill from you dated 09/25/2023
and I am sorry to tell you that I don’t understand the date of your invoice. Did you put the month before the day? There are only a maximum of months in a year in my understanding, and here you are exceeding the amount by 13 months of which in fact do not exist. No calendars in the world have 25 months in a year. Today is the 25th of September 2023 and your bill states that it is the 9th of the 25h which is ridiculous. This bill should be written as 25/09/2023.
No Sir, In America, I might remind you, we write the month first so 09/25/2023 is totally correct. In America we put the month first so 09 is the month of September of course and 25 is the day.
If you were writing it out in letters in Europe and the rest of the world it would 25th of September 2023. 25/09/2023 Not the 9th of the 25th day.
Yes Sir, but you see in this country we put the month before the day, it is quite logical you know our very sophisticated computer only understands this and that is the way it is.
Yes, but I am British you see and I don’t understand your method. Your computer should adjust to all types of people, in fact the rest of the world – those of us coming from another country cannot spend hours trying to work out the date of an invoice. You must inform your computer person to correct this and then I can pay your bill – maybe giving me a discount too as it is you who have made a mistake. Making a mistake on an invoice is
an official error and I regret to tell you that I cannot pay this bill as it is not conform to the normal.
Excuse me Sir, but I have completed the work and now you must pay the bill otherwise…
I have a family to feed and cannot wait to get paid.
Yes, but let’s face it, you must admit its weird. Despite the variety of date formats used around the world, the US is the only country to insist on using month/day/year.
As an American, I've wondered this myself. Here is my thought on why we do it.
Because context is king here. And the month is the most contextual part of the date info, among day, month and year. Here's how I mean.
If I were to give just one part of the date, how much emotion, memory and sense of "what's going on" would each evoke?
The Month/Day/Year format definitely goes back a very, very long way, as you can see by the original Declaration of Independence:
The month-day-year format, or mm/dd/yy matches the way that we verbally cite dates. We rarely say “the ninth of May, twenty-nineteen.” It is far more common for us to recite the date as “May ninth, twenty-nineteen.” If you write down that almost universal (in the US) way of citing the date using numerals instead of words, it is directly rendered as “5/9/2019,” or “05/09/2019” if you insist on using leading zeroes. This way of writing the date out using numerals simply mirrors the way that we verbally cite dates. This style seems natural and intuitive to most Americans.
Clearly Americans prefer things that are irrational, jumbled and confusing
That is just the way we like it.”
